On December 3, 1967 the World’s first human to human heart transplant was performed at the renowned Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town. The operation was considered a succes and a medical milestone. The man who performed this feat of pioneering surgery and led the world into an era of sopisticated medical advances was Christiaan Barnard, the surgeon who dared. (tourist leaflet)
I knew that Christiaan Barnard, from the familie-tree Barnard (we lost the “h” apparently somewhere in france a couple of ages ago) lived in South-Africa, but still by coincidence I happen to pass his memorial museum in Cape Town. I decided to have a look.
The Heart of Cape Town Museum only recently reconstructed the whole setting “as on Dec 3”. The people who performed the operation (!) even prepared the reconstruction of the items and apparatus. Moreover, installation of even more rooms with artifacts and film is planned. I’m still puzzled how Christiaan managed to finish his 7 year Phd and a Masters within just 2 years while also earning his student wage with car washing and dating up his wife. Maybe this explains how he came up with the term “braindead”, being very tired at the end of each day? Anyway, I can recommend anyone who’s nearby to have a look. Its a rare opportunity to stand this close to a real operation room, with historic significance.
Below some audio of him about this first operation.
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As some of you already know I’ve started a new website www.bangkoktalk.nl on which the Bangkok Talk Production Company of Christine Barnhard-Kappetijn and Peter Jan Rens will broadcast the Bangkok Talk Talk Show.
This show provides Thai/Dutch sport news and information. Supplying high-quality, multi-platform sport content to governing interesting entities, the media and customers worldwide. Premium entertainment, essential news and business information are some other features of the talk show.
Bangkok Talk Show
Bangkok Talk Show is an International Talk show made for the Dutch speaking and Thai market. The host is Peter Jan Rens together with Thai/English/Dutch speaking Agnes Nieholt. Peter Jan is a movie producer, writer and TV Host of famous talk, children and game shows in Holland, Belgium and Germany. Winner of the ‘Gouden Televizierring.’
The guests are an international mix of celebrities, mainly coming from Thailand and the Netherlands. The show is broadcasted on the website www.bangkoktalk.nl and www.bangkoktalk.tv and is for sale for international television channel.
More information can be found here. An Englisch version will be launched soon on www.bangkoktalk.tv
Besides broadcasting the productions of the production company it is my aim to make this and the upcoming English website a meeting point for those who are interested in Thailand and the region. Provide useful information and insights and entertainment. Of course I will try to attract local bloggers to join me and make this blog a connection point between the South East Asian and Europe / USA.
It is my intention to leave Holland for a while (within a few months), and start to do some other interesting internet related stuff in Asia. More information will be provided very soon.
Vincent Barnhard
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As you have probably noticed Barnhard Blog is using Google Adsense on its WordPress weblog.
The idea was to offer visitors who entered our website through a search engine a more relevant website for their query. In the process we could earn a buck or two, to spent on drinks during editorial meetings 😉
Sadly most advertisements are not really relevant to the main content of entries, most of them are generated by the word ‘Blog’. I will therefore probably remove the Google advertisements in the near future.
But before I take such measures I want to give Google a change, so I wrote them a letter:
To whom it may concern,
We are using the WordPress weblog script for our family website. The name of our website is “Barnhard Blog”, which is mentioned a couple of times on each page. As result we are getting a lot of “blog” advertisements. Wich are totally irrelevant for most entries.
Today I searched quite some time for a single script line, which I could parse into my WordPress single page script, who could tell the googlebot were the relevant content of the individual page is at. This relevant piece of php script is the post entry and its comments. All other links and texts are also relevant for the googlebot to index and cache our website (for e.g. cache look in your search engine) but it is totally irrelevant for the specific content / article / discussion this specific page is about.
So to put it bluntly: Why should I continue to use ad sense when 90% of my ads are aimed at / generated by the word ‘blog’? I do not want to spent any time on e.g. sitemaps, filling in list of relevant words concerning my site or filtering out irrelevant advertisers. Because I think it should be extremely easy to automatically show the goolebots which part of the automatically generated individual page is most relevant for the search query. In our case the header, footer and sidebar should be ranked lower than the main content (entry and comments).
I hope that you could e-mail me such a script line.
Kind regards,
F.V. Barnhard
I will keep you updated !
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Our family thinks it is a nice idea to support friends and relatives we wrote about with a Barnhard Blog banner.
Let’s hope the banners will not cause too much data traffic 😉
So if you are a friend or relative and would like to have a banner on this website please e-mail me your website and attach a banner:
448px x 100px
jpg, png or gif
no animimation allowed
30kb max
No border please
1px black line (border=”1″) is automatically placed
Please note that due to the occupation of some Barnhard family members we would like to keep their identity private and want to prevent any association to this weblog. Therefore we will not place banners to websites that may reveal the identity of one or more members of our family (e.g. with pictures).
All the Barnhard Blog supports banners are on this page
I also placed some Barnhard Blog banners (please hyperlink) for your website, please let them link to http://barnhard.nl (not http://www.barnhard.nl).
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The Marion Steam Shovel Company of Lima, Ohio, constructed a series of steam operated rail mounted log loaders for use by logging companies. A number of these were delivered new into Canada and a number of others may have been brought in second hand.
The loaders, known as Barnhart loaders, travelled on rails laid on the railway flatcars which were used to transport the logs out of the woods. As each flatcar was loaded, the loader moved backwards until it came to the end of the car. It then hauled itself across to the next car by means of a U-shaped piece of steel channel. This process was repeated right down to the end of the train. This saved having to move the cars to be close to the logs to be loaded, and ensured that the loader was always in the right place for loading.
Website: www.railways.incanada.net
Update:
A restored 1910 Model 10 Barnhart Log Loader currently resides at Pennsylvania Lumber Museum in Galeton, PA. [photo @ Flickr]
More detailed pictures, including shots of the inside, steam engine, drums and gears and more can be found here and here on Flickr.
O scale Barnhart Loader can be found here, here and here
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